One challenge in diagnosing and treating internal areas of a subject's body has been adequately visualizing those internal areas. Visualization may be difficult to achieve in minimally invasive procedures, where elongated instruments with small diameters may be navigated through openings, passageways, and cavities of a subject's body, to access internal areas therein. Those elongated small-diameter instruments may include, for example, catheters or endoscopes.
Ureteroscopy is a procedure that may be performed to diagnose and treat urinary tract diseases and ureteral strictures. A ureteroscope may be inserted retrograde through the urinary tract to allow diagnosis and treatment of the urinary tract under visualization. Some ureteroscopes may not be disposable, and so after each successive urological procedure, they may have to be cleaned and sterilized before the next use. This may delay successive procedures. Such ureteroscopes may also require extensive and expensive maintenance for proper operation. The time and resources consumed for cleaning, sterilizing, and maintaining ureteroscopes my result in escalated costs for ureteroscopic procedures, and other medical procedures that utilize similarly configured scopes.
Furthermore, some ureteroscopes may have to be used with specialized electronic equipment. The specialized electronic equipment may include components that may operate in conjunction with components of those ureteroscopes. Purchasing and maintaining the specialized electronic equipment may be costly. In some cases, the specialized electronic equipment may not operate properly unless paired with one type of ureteroscope. When that type of ureteroscope is not being used, the specialized electronic equipment may remain un-utilized. Moreover, multiple types or models of specialized electronic equipment may be required for multiple ureteroscopes. Further still, repairing, replacing, or updating the specialized electronic equipment or its corresponding ureteroscope may render one incompatible with the other. This may lead to additional costs and downtime.
The exemplary features of the present disclosure are directed to improvements in ureteroscopy technology.